Up To Here
by digby
Joe McCarthy Lieberman and Richard Lugar have been braying once again about how Iraq war dissenters are helping the enemy and upsetting our allies by showing that we are in “disarray.”
Chuck Hagel is having none of it:
“If we don’t debate this we are not worthy of our country. We fail our country.”
.
The Geico Supreme Court
by digby
I think Matt Yglesias should get the Nobel prize for this idea. Product placement (as we saw with the “Baby Einstein” colloquey in last night’s SOTU) as a way to close the deficit is brilliant. Why shouldn’t Disney pay for that effusive mention from the president of the United States on national television?
I don’t think Yglesias goes far enough, though. Every speech, every photo-op could also be sponsored by a different corporation. And just as the sports arenas named Viagra Park and Jonny Cat Field no longer have a civic identity, we could change the name of the White House to the “Halliburton House” (for now — the next president could have a different sponsor.) Companies would pay billions for that kind of daily mention in the free media.
It would also be much more transparent and equally efficient to have elected officials simply license their offices to industry to become the Senator from Pfizer or Congressman Exxon. At least we would know up front who we were voting for and perhaps we the people could start lobbying the industries directly for charity and pro-bono projects to patch up the safety net or do some basic scientific research and the like.
As Yglesias says, raising taxes on the rich is “desperately inside the box thinking.” Product placement to fund the government is the kind of creative brainstorming that makes America great.
.
Webb Writer
by digby
It has come to my attention from several readers that I failed to properly praise Jim Webb’s speech last night. So, let me put on the record right now that I thought it was the best SOTU rebuttal I’ve ever heard and, moreover, it was the perfect speech at the perfect time by the perfect person. (How’s that?)
I have actually praised Webb effusively many times, often for his fearless and common sense attitude. I’m a big fan of his style.
But I’m also not surprised that Webb can give a great speech as he did last night. He is an award winning professional writer, after all. I would hope that Democratic politicians everywhere take a good hard look at that speech and figure out why it was so effective. It wasn’t just because it came from a manly man with a great story, as the chatterers would have it; it is because it is a very well written speech. They could all learn a thing or two from the pro in their midst about how to get these ideas across.
More of this please:
Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues — those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death — we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm‘s way.
[…]
As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. “When comes the end?” asked the general who had commanded our forces in Europe during World War II. And as soon as he became president, he brought the Korean War to an end.
These presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this president to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way.
.
Meanwhile Back At The Ranch
by poputonian
On the same day Bush (Conquistador-US) addressed the nation, the good citizens of New Mexico quietly went about more important business. David Swanson at afterdowningstreet.org reports:
Over 100 citizens showed up for the introduction, and there were over two hours of citizen speeches at the announcement event. Reporters from every New Mexico newspaper and the Associated Press were there, as well as ABC and NBC cameras. What they saw was a bottom-up movement for impeachment, exactly what inpeachment is supposed to be.
Like a snowball rolling.
Tuesday, January 23rd at 2PM, Senators Gerald Ortiz y Pino D-ABQ and John Grubesic D-Santa Fe introduced their resolution to impeach President George Bush and Richard Cheney. Based on a resolution crafted by Phil Burk of impeachbush.tv and the national impeachment movement, the resolution made four charges, three of which are violations of the US Constitution.
WHEREAS, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney conspired with others to defraud the United States of America by intentionally misleading congress and the public regarding the threat from Iraq in order to justify a war in violation of Title 18 United States Code, Section 371; and
WHEREAS, George W. Bush has admitted to ordering the national security agency to conduct electronic surveillance of American civilians without seeking warrants from the foreign intelligence surveillance court of review, duly constituted by congress in 1978, in violation of Title 50 United States Code, Section 1805; and
WHEREAS, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney conspired to commit the torture of prisoners in violation of Title 18 United States Code, Chapter 113C, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Geneva Conventions, which under Article VI of the United States constitution are part of the “supreme Law of the Land”; and
WHEREAS, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney acted to strip American citizens of their constitutional rights by ordering indefinite detention without access to legal counsel, without charge and without the opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on the discretionary designation by the president of a United States citizen as an “enemy combatant”, all in subversion of law…
Back to Swanson:
The New Mexico resolution will go to three committees in the Senate: Rules, Judiciary, and Public Affairs. Three of the eight sponsors chair those three committees. Four of the eight sit on the Rules Committee, which is the first stop, and where five votes are needed. Ortiz y Pino expected to serve on Rules but has been moved to another committee. The fifth Democrat and the needed vote will be a Navajo representative yet to be appointed.
A Navajo representative. Sweet!
The Senate Committee hearings will have to happen over the next four weeks or so to leave time for introduction and passage in the House during New Mexico’s 60-day legislative session. Local organizer Leland Lehrman is confident it can be done.
Webb’s SOTU response was nearly perfect. I agree. But I’m keeping an eye on the [snow]ball, since only impeachment will stop the Cowboy President … from killing off more of the human race.
Grown-ups
by digby
I’ve got to agree with Atrios Thers about this (and not just because he mentioned me in the post.) This new found ardor among the cognoscenti for macho Democrats is predictably shallow, but it’s also the only way to get the codpiece obsessed pundits to notice that the Democrats have something important to say.
I have written a lot about the fact that ever since the hippies grew their hair long and women fought for their right to be full members of society, the Republicans have successfully broken the parties into archetypal masculine and feminine tribes. I have long thought that this was one of our more difficult challenges. Public leadership archetypes are mostly male, after all, and the right appropriated them all.
But that’s about to change, isn’t it? While we justly celebrate Jim Webb’s strong no-nonsense speech tonight we also saw a rising Democratic party led by powerful, intelligent women. If there’s an archetype at work now it’s a healthy modern family — mom and dad are equals.
I don’t know how long it will take the media chatterers to get over their odd, adolescent testosterone fixation, but most of the rest of the country, as usual, is way ahead of them. The Democrats are the party of adults, male and female. The Republicans and the media are the only ones still stuck in Junior High waiting for the football captain to ask them to the dance.
* I realize that this tracks with Lakoff’s “nurturing parents” meme, but it didn’t really have any meaning until women rose into leadership positions. Otherwise, it’s one male working, nurturing parent and an absent mom. That’s not exactly an archetypal leadership model. (And nurturing is not a good political leadership word for either gender — it should be saved for other purposes.)
.
He’s Always Been Naked
by digby
As we await the magic moment when the Codpiece enters the capitol and wades through the adoring crowd to take to the podium and tell us what the state of our union is, I can’t help but be reminded of what it used to be like when Bush made a speech or held a press conference and people like Howard Fineman said things like this:
If he’s a cowboy he’s the reluctant warrior, he’s Shane… because he has to, to protect his family.”
This was the tenor of the political discourse for years. Luckily, the country has seemed to finally noticed that this man’s been walking around stark raving naked and babbling like an idiot for years. But it was a very depressing and disorienting time when the entire press corps and official punditocrisy insisted that this illiterate fool was on the par with with Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. Sometimes I felt like I was losing my mind.
There have been a lot of arguments in recent months about whether those of us who were against the war are due any particular respect for having been right. I suppose that will sort itself over time. But it behooves the critics who insist that the fact we were right does not say anything important about our judgment, to also acknowledge, at least to themselves, that we were also right about Bush.
.
“He Is An Innocent Man And He Has Been Wrongly And Unfairly Accused”
by digby
Here’s Fox News’ Libby trial story on Brit Hume’s show tonight. It starts off with the right lede, but goes downhill from there:
Hume: An attorney for former white house aide Scooter Libby said Libby feared the whtie house was trying to use him as a scapegoat in the investigation into the leaking of a cia employees name. That contention was a key point during opening statements in Libby’s perjury trial. Chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle has the story:
Video:
Reporter: Ready for opening statements Mr Fitzgerald?
Angle: Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was tight lipped as he arrived for opening statements, a day that would be devoted to competing conspiracy theories. Once in the courtroom, Fitzgerald spent an hour laying out what he described as an administration effort to beat back critics of the Iraq war, in this case former ambassador Joe Wilson who wrote a New York Times op-ed accusing the administration of twisting the intelligence on Iraq to justify the war. Fitzgerald argued Scooter Libby, as part of a White House push back, sought to punish Wilson by knowingly exposing his wife Valerie Plame who worked at the CIA then lied about it as Fitzgerald charged when announcing the indictment.
Video:
Fitzgerald: We need to know the truth. And anyone who goes into a Grand Jury and lies, obstructs or impedes the investigation has committed a serious crime.
Angle: When it was his turn, Libby’s lawyer Ted Wells flatly rejected the prosecutions claims saying “Scooter Libby is innocent,he is totally innocent, he is an innocent man and he has been wrongly and unfairly accused. This is a weak, paper thin, circumstantial case,” he went on, “about he said, she said.”
Wells said “Libby had no knowledge whether Valerie Plame’s job was classified or not, no witness will take the stand and say that,” he told the jury, “and I can’t tell you whether she was or wasn’t.”
But no one is charged with that and Wells noted Libby didn’t know that one way or the other. “People do not lie for the heck of it,” he said, “Scooter Libby did not do anything wrong. He had nothing to cover up and he had no reason to lie.”
Wells also sought to paint Libby as a victim, pointing to statements from the White House about those who might be involved in any illegal activity.
Video:
Bush: If someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration
Angle: But when the White House later said that Karl Rove was not responsible, Libby told the Vice President he feared he was being cast as the scapegoat. “They’re trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb,” Wells quoted Libby as saying,”I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected.”
As events unfolded, though, Fitzgerald did investigate Rove but decided not to indict him, and the official who first leaked Valerie Plame’s name, State department official Richard Armitage, came clean to Fitzgerald but he wasn’t indicted either.
Jim Angle, Fox News
Biased much? He picked out seven or so different quotes by Ted Wells, all of which were simultaneously printed on the screen, saying that Libby is innocent, innocent, innocent. And anyway, there wasn’t any real issue because Rove wasn’t indicted and Armitage “came clean” and admitted that he accidentally let it slip during a gossipy little hen party with Bob Woodward.
They acted very casual about the story, no biggie, nothing to see here and moved on immediately to Bush’s big speech about nothing.
This is good, though. Tweety had Trent Lott on:
Matthews: What do you think of the fact that Scooter Libby’s attorney today, Ted Wells, aimed directly at Karl Rove and said he had set up his client Scooter Libby to take the fall for that leak of the the CIA agents identifica… ID. back a couple years back.
What do you make of the charge of the president’s assistant, Scooter Libby, he’s also the Vice president’s assistant, blaming Karl Rove for shennanigans in the White House, aimed at leaving the blame for all that mess, that leak, on the vice president’s man?
Lott: I didn’t see it. But I had heard it, of course. And I’m frankly, uh, surprised that that would be what they’d say in the opening part of this trial. I don’t know whether that’s accurate or not, but certainly, uh, it’s a problem, in many ways.
Matthews: Do you think your party’s coming apart….?
Haha.
.
Partial Meme Abortion
by digby
Ezra demolishes the laughable new “health care” plan that Bush reportedly plans to unveil tonight, so nobody has to spend any time even thinking about whether it might be worth meeting him “halfway” (so that he can pull the ball away, anyway.)
I’m not a health care expert, so I take the word of trustworthy wonks like Ezra about the feasibility of the plan. But I have been observing politics for a while and there is something to be said about how this pitch is going to be structured and how it will affect the upcoming health care debate.
First, Bush and the Republicans are setting up a new meme, which is that the reason that American health care is so costly is not because insurance companies are spending lots of unnecessary money on administrative costs and advertising or that the uninsured are treated late in the most expensive way possible (emergency rooms.) The reason health care costs are so high is because spoiled people are overusing the system.
This is really to say that we must save the poor put-upon insurance companies from having to pay claims to your co-worker and neighbor who goes to the doctor all the time because it’s costing you money and maybe even your own healthcare. They are planning to divide Americans along lines of healthy and sick, young and old, those with good plans and those with bad ones. If nothing else it muddies the waters nicely for the insurance industry.
I don’t know if it will work, but it’s not a bad opening salvo. They need to break through the idea that the insurance companies are bad guys and sell one that the answer to the health care crisis does not lie with some form of universal coverage. They have to offer a rationale for opposing real reform. This is a first step. The plan has no chance of being enacted and they know this. They just want to start putting down some markers to derail anything significant.
We’ll have more clues about what they have in mind when we see what kind of bullspin they put on it tonight and tomorrow.
.
An Inconvenient Oscar
by digby
Can I just say how thrilled I am that Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and the Melissa Etheridge song “I Need To Wake Up” from the same film are both nominated for Oscars?
Hollywood was very, very, very slow off the mark with Bush and Iraq and failed to use their power for good for much too long. A bunch of people booed Michael Moore at the 2003 awards in a shameful show of chickenshit conformity. It took some Dixie Chicks, from Texas and Nashville, to show what artistic and political courage was.
So now we have an extremely important documentary (which needs to be seen by everyone on the planet) nominated for the highest achievement award the film community bestows. I know that there is a lot of controversy about how documentaries are rewarded and wehther social conscience should be a factor. But this is different. It isn’t yet another film about the holocaust, as enlightening and moving as they may be — it’s about the most important challenge humankind currently faces. The notorious Hollywood liberals should earn their keep on this one and reward this film.
And I would bet money that Melissa is going to tear the roof off when she sings her song. I grant you that it’s no “It’s Hard Out Here Fo A Pimp” but it’s a great song nonetheless.
And I would just love to see Al Gore give an oscar acceptance speech.
.
Holy Moly
by digby
Norah O’Donnell is asking Andy Card and Leon Panetta if the president is going to have to ask Dick Cheney to resign as a result of what’s being alleged at the Libby Trial. (They both punted.)
If that’s the beltway chatter, look for the Republican noise machine to go into high gear. I’ll be expecting to hear rumors of Patrick Fitzgerald’s affinity for bestiality starting tomorrow — mostly from Mary matalin, Dick Cheney’s most vicious attack dog, who will be snarling like a caged beast over this (and thus will show herself an expert on the subject.)
Update: To be clear — the Republicans have to go after Fitzgerald, not Libby. He’s holding a cudgel over Cheney and Rove’s heads and they are not in much of a position to hit back at him. The GOP will try to stir up the shit and distract everyone with an attack on the prosecutor to discredit the whole case. It’s really the only move they have.
.